Nevada school shooting buried in the back pages

I wanted to briefly focus the attention of NCR readers on the latest tragic shooting that took place in a Nevada middle school.

A 12-year-old boy killed a teacher and wounded two middle-school students. He then took his own life by shooting himself in the head.

It is an event almost too horrible to contemplate.

Yet, what kind of an impression has this story made on our own lives? Did we see the headline and then move on to the sports page? Did we stop for a moment and think, ‘Oh, this is what it means to live in the United States of America’? We are a great country, but we are helpless to do anything about gun violence even when it touches children in our schools.

The Baltimore Sun saw fit to print this story on page 7 and page 8 of the paper’s Oct. 22 and 23editions, respectively. Does this suggest that these incidents have just become too commonplace to warrant any significant attention?

One fellow student described the 12-year-old shooter as a nice kid. Although undoubtedly a troubled kid, he would still be a nice kid, if he hadn’t had access to a semi-automatic handgun.